I knew if I stayed in bed, we’d have a repeat of Friday where I was in pajamas at 4pm with no shower & pretty much a sorry state of affairs.

So I got up, poured a cup of coffee & popped muffins in the oven.  Straightened my hair & rubbed a dash of perfume under my jeans & light sweater.  I felt silly at first – who would see me?  I looked at the silk tops & pencil skirts & lined slacks hanging in my closet.  I’m going to need more jeans.  Will I ever wear that purple silk shift again?  I’m going to need a hat & gloves that aren’t dressy.  Should I just have a “shop my closet” sale?  I’m going to need more Zoloft.

I typed out words & listened to the quiet, finding thankfulness in not having to commute.  That bumper-to-bumper traffic was really fraying my nerves & patience.  The oven dings – muffins are ready.  I make a second cup of coffee & wonder if the new kitchen chairs will be delivered soon.  I wonder if I should send them back, even though they were purchased with Christmas money.

An hour later, Harry stood at the top of the stairs, bleary-eyed & hugging his stuffed monkey.

& so this new journey begins, the journey with an unexpected start & no set end.

 I look to 2012 & what I wish to accomplish, all I see is a desire to grow.  Personally, by selling our house & buying a new home where we can expand our family.  Creating a super-fun new series for everyone to laugh & be themselves.  Developing a new skill, maybe taking structured sewing lessons.  I’d like to take where I am now in life, push against the walls until my arms are shaking & my voice feels tired, but everything around me expands.

When I try to pin one word to 2012, I am suprised that my initial reaction is not “grow,” but HOW I wish to grow.  How I wish to expand & breathe deeply & where to exhale my heart.

PRETTY.

A surprising word to shape a year around, no?

I look to delight in life in 2012.  To soak in new books & pretty words, to paint walls & furniture.  To iron pretty shirts & wear red lipstick & take care of myself both inside & out.  For the home to be clean, but full of laughter & sunshine & Matchbox cars strewn across the floor.  To live the abundant life & a beautiful life, to feel worth of feeling pretty all around me.

I think “pretty” can be bone-deep joy & thankfulness.

The pretty found in the muck & trenches of life.  Seeking God, but feeding souls by passing bread rather than Bible quotes.  To let faith become a life-altering beat in my heart to where prayer is not whispered on knees, but servitude with dirty hands that scrub away years of doubting myself.

I’d like to put my heart back on my sleeve.

I’d like to share all of those things on here.

Do you have a word for the year?  Something to strive toward? 

We began talking about blogging – conferences, sponsorships, traffic & posts & the urge to grow despite the pressure to succeed.  It’s a hard balance.

I worry about being irrelavent.

I fear nobody understanding or taking my words wrong; some nights, I feel anxiety over that blue “Publish” button.

I care about stats & yes, that summer slow-down where traffic goes belly-up while everyone is on vacation.  Even though I don’t want to care.

So I make resolutions not to check stats.  Then I break that resolution.

I doubt my ability by comparing myself to others.

I feel twinges of envy when a friend of mine gets a specific sponsor, opportunity, free lance gig, email, etc.

I hope to make Babble’s Top lists, even though I’ve never made one.

I tell myself that blog post isn’t good enough, funny enough, just…enough.  I get writer’s block from those thoughts.

I’m guilty of saying, “Just five more minutes…” on Twitter at the end of the night.

I think Neville is hot.  oops, I don’t know how that one got in there.

The point is, I think we’re all the same the moment we sit down to type out words.

It hits me when I lay down at night & my hips ache so badly & I wonder why I’m so tired.  I’m busy.

& I feel like I’m losing out on life.

Dramatic much?  But I spend 9 hours a day behind a computer, trying to make sense of my project manager & the boss man’s travel schedule.  I spend 2-3 hours per day in my car, trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic.  I get home & throw on dinner, try to soak up time with Harrison, but the moment he is in pajamas I am back the the grind of taking out trash, picking up toys, & making the house presentable just in case they schedule a showing.  Just in case.

My one outlet, writing & sharing my thoughts & capturing them on film (albeit roughly), feels bone dry & I can’t help but fear if my lack of inspiration comes from lack of living.  My friend Nish often describes her blog as the spill-over of life & I’ve always felt the same – my blog holds all of the emotions & thought processes that I cannot keep to myself.  But these days, I feel like I’m on autopilot.

We race out the door every morning; my hair is flying & 75% of the time I have forgotten makeup, so I have yet to capture my attempt at growing my style.

The sun is down when I get home, so every night is a game of chase through the living room or vrooming cars around my ankles while I cook.

We did not take a winter long weekend to the mountains this year due to finances.

I see my friends grow & inspire & be viral & I shake my head at the emptiness of my own journal notes.  I’m being left behind.

I have no idea what’s happening with Zooey Dash-a-whatever or the other Kar-dash-a-whatever’s because I don’t have cable.  I have now been demoted to Former Pop Culture Princess.

I order clothes & Christmas presents & hell, even groceries online.

Some mothers ache for more interaction & more rigid schedule, but I long for days of a lazier pace & more sunshine with my tiny guy.

I just don’t know how to find it quite yet.

So.

In October, Doug was laid off when the company he worked for closed with no warning.  There was lots of swearing on our parts for about 48 hours, then we buckled down hard.  I dropped out of my project management class to get a refund on the tuition. Doug filed for unemployment.  I picked up the gig at Babble & any sponsored post offered (remember that week in December where there were three in a row?) to help alleviate the dip into our emergency fund.  We put the house on the market, knowing that we’d be in deep water if Doug went jobless for more than a year.  & in this economy, that fear was entirely possible.

Doug & I have always been conservative with our finances, which means that in any environment of uncertainty, we treat it like a crisis.

In the middle of November, we discovered that Doug & Harry were no longer covered by insurance, nor was COBRA an option.  This was after we attended Harrison’s two-year check-up, complete with three vaccines.  Plus six private speech therapy sessions.   On top of missing half our income, now we had a heavy month of uninsured medical expenses.

note: money is hard in marriage, even when there is plenty.  it gets harder when times are tight.

At the same time, we have been oddly happier than we’ve been in a long time.  Living so intentionally has created a sense of empowerment & togetherness.  Simplicity really is a lovely thing when $8.00 Netflix is all you can afford.  Hell, we’ve even been having more sex because…what else are we going to do on a Saturday evening with no money?   In early December, Doug praised my Type A personality because Harrison’s Christmas gifts were purchased before the lay-off, which meant Santa would visit.  We took great joy in splurging for a $3.00 Almond Joy coffee creamer that Doug wanted to buy but felt was unecessary.  The smile on his face made me all warm & fuzzy.  He made me coffee the next morning with the creamer.

I wish I could do justice to how perfect that little $3.00 creamer was for making us smile & realizing that something small to share was even better than a dozen roses or a new set of golf clubs or even a vacation.

Things began looking up again as my new insurance kicked in & the boys were covered again.  We had good feedback on our house.  Doug had several good interviews and began helping his old coworker start-up a company under a new investor (it launched this past week!  he is gainfully employed again!).    I made a bonus & we were able to afford a few Christmas splurges. I still adore my new job.  Then Doug’s dad got sick & everything has turned into a bigger ball of stress since then.

The other night, driving in the dark for an hour with Harrison screaming for his Auntie, I thought I might be reaching a breaking point.  I felt like I was constantly working, never shutting off, with the weight of everything on my shoulders.  I felt that old nemesis trying to creep in, those choking thoughts that pull me under.  You deserve this stress, your baby doesn’t love you, you’re a distracted wife, you have a bitter heart, you’ll never get it right…I think the worst part is that even when I feel good & stable, there is this prodigal twisty part of my soul just lurking.

Waiting for me to slip.  Waiting for me to give just an inch.

But I’m not giving an inch.  I’m fucking making it after all, okay?

.

p.s. we are so lucky, so thankful that doug was able to get a paycheck again after only two months of unemployment.  we are bursting with gratitude towards my new job & the timeliness of babble’s job offer, which gave us security the past few months.  my heart goes out to anyone that feels that stress longer than us & i know there are plenty of you out there. i wish there was more i could do other than simply say that i understand.

p.p.s. it feels so good to get this off my shoulders.  like my body just took a huge cleansing breath.

photo

So they count it different ways.  Numbers on the scale, resolutions written in ink, goals scratched in journals, or one word.

I have been silent this week because I do not know how to begin 2012.  How do I begin with one word when I want to strive for so many words?  How do I narrow that down?  How do I resolve to get healthy before growing our family again without sounding cliche, all while waiting with anxious breath for one person to fall in love with our home?

The past year I fell in love with motherhood & battled demons & changed jobs & took on my first hard-core paid writing gig.  We balanced on a fence throughout most of the year, waiting for chips to fall & our lives to finally settle.  Some of them have, some of them haven’t, & I’ve found my voice oddly silent during these times.  Maybe that’s maturity & wisdom that being 28 in 2011 brought me & will continue teaching as I turn 29 in 2012.  Maybe it’s that little piece of me that keeps changing & growing & spinning bigger to where it’s not such a little piece anymore…it’s me.

All of me.

 The silly. The mother & wife. The spiritual. The career woman & homemaker. The blasphemous. The girl that struggles with life & contentedness & body image, who loves pretty pictures & yellow roses & yes, a good set of shapewear.

p.s. i have scribbled down words & resolutions & goals.  i’ll be sharing soon.

I’m in that place of whirling chaos & craving a quiet day where the clock seems to move at a slower pace.  Where I can sew an advent calendar with warm coffee in my mug, or watch a movie with my boys, or maybe bake cookies from scratch.  Where I’m not sitting in traffic almost three hours per day, wondering how I will fit all my work in, trying to remember if I bought the right cream-of-soup for dinner.  I try to remember to be in the moment, to find specific parts of my day where I let my mind clear & I am deliberate in my thoughts – I chose the shower, which is odd to most people, but it’s where I feel the tension fall & I can block out calendars & deadlines & Excel spreadsheets.  On weekends, I find myself sitting at the table tapping out emails to my boss while Harrison sits to my left, elbows-deep in PlayDough.

It’s a weird work-life balance that always feels close to tipping clean over.

I try to train my thoughts, when I am thisclose to snapping at my long commute, but then I work to discipline myself to be thankful for the job to be leaving every night & the warm home to return to.  I am luckier than most.

When I’m stressed over a spreadsheet with over 200 entries & codes to enter, I remember that my boss gave me a shot only one month in & named me Project Associate to a huge partnership.  The flattery in it is both exciting & intimidating.  I want so badly to please them all.

I laugh at all the confessions in my post about aching hips & smelly feet & “ombre” hair & how motherhood makes us all feel kinda lumpy both inside & out.

I wonder what I will write next & worry my words will fall stale & my words my heart will become irrelevant.  I try to focus on the keyboard in front of me, but I worry that I will never know the secret knock to the cool kids club.  (is there a secret knock?)

I try to figure out a way to squeeze in the gym or a run or a stretch, but I’m not sure how to create an extra in my day without sacrificing something that can’t be sacrificed at this point.  Maybe some day, but not right now.

Most of the time, I feel like this:

 Only very, very oddly happy.

Not because the thoughts aren’t there.  They are there, spilling over madly because this blog is the capture of life & oh, life is being lived right now.

The up & down & GO GO GO! of life where I am sitting in conference rooms at 8:30am & shoving a sandwich in at my desk, prepping for the afternoon’s conference call.  A new assignment that has me flattered & overwhelmed, determined to show the boss that yes! I can do this!  The texting of insurance cards & jotting down ideas & making sure we have all the ingredients for dinner & no, Harrison, you cannot have a cookie for dinner.

The epic meltdown occurs & I’m standing there at the end of the day, shoes kicked off & button-down blouse still on & stirring boiling pasta.  I look at him & close my eyes, taking deep breaths & trying out that 1-2-3 magic but on myself.  He is maddeningly two & woke up this morning on a mission to test all the limits.  A piece of me wants to throw up my hands in frustration, but I look back down at him & all I can do is wrap him up in my arms.

He’s here tonight.  My friend Beth is not so lucky as her little boy Keegan went to Heaven today.  Keegan, not three weeks older than my own little boy.

I am undone.  Completely raw for the day in my stocking feet & a little boy who does not understand why his momma is hugging him instead of using the usual exasperated tones at dinnertime.

I put him in bed & pull the red & aqua cover to his chin & I think that I cannot handle Chicka Chicka Boom Boom one more time, but then I remember the momma’s who never got to read it, or who won’t get to read it.  I wonder if it would be silly to ask God to maybe read Keegan Chicka Chicka Boom Boom one night, just to let him know we’re thinking of his momma’s heart?  & so I pick up that board book, starting to show signs of wear after only a few months because it is loved so.

& my heart, showing signs of wear because it has loved so.

So yes, life is spilling over & I am left breathless & awkward in it’s path.

The silence is deafening & I begin to resent the silence, to grow weary of it & imagine that He must grow weary of my pleas.  My heart puts conditional love on an unconditional promise & I wonder, have I been wrong all along?

oh, ye of little faith.

& then news comes, the kind of wonderful news that moves mountains & shakes the soul & I hear God whisper, “See?”  & after all these years, I know.  I know that my prayers did not fall upon deaf ears, that I did not plead in vain, & that miracles do happen.  I let the tears & thankfulness fall free.

I challenge myself on days when I sit in front of photo editing software & try to find my own style.

I adore the days where I pull out the camera & make silly faces & crack jokes & imagine my mother’s face when she reads a post laced with profanity.

I love that some days, I put pen to paper & let my heart sink deep & the words flow without editing.

My entire life, I have wrestled a wild, exuberant side with a quiet artistic shyness that I never seem to balance well.  Like the days when I have the world under my thumb but walk into the break room & cower because I cannot say “hello” to the girls laughing over their lunch.  At almost thirty, I am beginning to accept this about myself.  Accept that my moods & writing change & that it’s best when I just go with it.  That’s when it comes from the heart – the days of laughter & hilarity, the days of closing my eyes & letting words feel like poetry.

& I let this blog catch it all.